Music and Empathy
Definitions Empathy The ability to understand and experience what another person is feeling, often confused with sympathy: a common understanding between people. Unlike empathy, when you are feeling sympathy towards someone you often recognize what it is that they are feeling, but do not feel it for yourself. Those with high levels of empathy, often called an “empath”, feel much deeper and differently. When you are sympathetic towards someone you understand what the person is going through and you offer your support; when you are empathetic towards someone you put yourself in their shoes- actually taking on the emotion they are feeling in order to understand and relate better. Emotional Induction The “taking on” of someone else’s emotion and feeling it for yourself. It is commonly confused with emotional mimicry, which is recognizing the emotion another person is feeling and copying their facial expressions, vocal patterns and posture. Emotional Contagion When observing another person’s emotions and behaviors triggers the same or similar emotions and behaviors in others. This is commonly confused with empathy as the concepts are the same, but the way the emotions are elicited or formed slightly vary. Each of these play a different part in the way we experience daily life, as well as how we process and enjoy listening to music. Three Types of Empathy Emotional Empathy Also known as affective empathy, it is the ability to share the feelings of another person. This is the part of empathy that allows people to connect and relate to each other while allowing for bonds to form. Cognitive Empathy Understanding how a person feels and what they might be thinking. The ability to understand what someone is thinking and feeling allows for better communication and understanding between people, while also paving the path to form a stronger bond. Compassionate Empathy Also called empathetic concern is the last piece of empathy that ties all the feelings together and drives you to do something to help. Feeling compassion for someone is pulling together your feelings and concerns for others to help them and make a difference. Connections of Music and Empathy Where music and empathy converge in the brain is with emotions. The average person listening to music will undergo emotional contagion where their brain will recognize the intended elicited emotion from the music and mimic it in the body. The emotional valence of a song determines the emotions felt by the listener, and in turn how the listener physically and mentally reacts. Listening to a song can cause an emotional reaction depending on the level of empathy the person feels both in general life and in connections with the song. Regardless of the presence of words in the music, the physical and emotional reactions that can be felt due to music will show in multiple different ways. Empaths and Music Those with higher levels of empathy undergo a similar but different experience when listening to music. Not only does an empath experience the emotional contagion from listening to the song itself, but they will as well experience the emotion that the composer/ author was feeling at the time of the song’s creation. This experience allows for a stronger emotional connection formed with music and the listener. People with higher levels of empathy undergo mental changes when listening to music, and the chemicals in the brain appear different than in those with lower levels of empathy. This accounts for the different physical and emotional reactions empaths often feel towards a song and gives explanation to why some people experience listening to music differently than others. What This Means The way emotions and music interact in the brain is continually being researched, but it has been shown time and time again that a connection has been forged, and the experience goes deeper than just listening to and enjoying a song. The average person who listens to music will react to the music with a general emotion- they may feel happy, sad, excited, angry, and anything else between, but that is where the reaction often stops. This is why people listen to music, to feel this emotional response. In the common person, this is the process of emotional contagion. The response to the music is not a real one, it is one the body mimics for the pleasure of listening to music. For empaths or people with higher levels of empathy, the emotional reaction goes beyond to a proper emotional reaction where the emotions are felt in the body, but they are felt alongside the initial emotion the empath was feeling while beginning the music listening process. In the end, what this means is music has a proper effect on the person listening to it, but it is based on the brain and the empathetic level of the music listener to see how deep this relationship goes and what this means for the individual person. Further Research https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs11031-017-9619-5.pdf https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781315596587 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02699931.2019.1591938 https://emusicology.org/article/view/4603/4162 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5897436/